Businesses in Panama, not China were «mainly responsible» for selling a tainted ingredient for medicines that killed at least 51 people, a senior official in China's product-inspection agency said Thursday. Wei Chuanzhong, vice minister of the Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said Chinese companies sold the tainted product, glycerin laced with an industrial solvent, to Spanish companies who then sold it to Panamanian companies. The product was then used to make cough syrup and other medicine. «The Panamanian business people are mainly responsible because they changed the scope of use and shelf-life of this product,» Wei was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
